Tag Archives: San Francisco Symphony

September 19, 2024 · 4:17 pm

The San Francisco Symphony: When the Ship Hits the Fans

Last night, ABC7 News’s Lyanne Melendez ran a report about the ongoing governance imbroglio facing the San Francisco Symphony. You can watch and read a transcript here.

It was a treat to get a video interview with SFS CEO Matthew Spivey and board chair Priscilla Geeslin. More of this, please! It is beyond fascinating not only to listen to what they say, but to watch how they say it.

A few things jumped out that I wanted to point out, because it feels like things are really starting to accelerate here. Without a change in course, it’s pretty clear that the S.S. SFS is headed straight toward an iceberg.

When it comes to the SFS meltdown, the media seems to smell metaphorical blood in the bay.

I continue to be struck by the fact that the current leadership of the San Francisco Symphony really has no defenders in any press: local, national, or international. They are getting hammered by all quarters, by all media. And if they were hoping to win over ABC7, that clearly didn’t go well.

The ABC report introduces Spivey and Geeslin like so:

[Conductor Esa-Pekka] Salonen didn’t actually begin his tenure until 2020 and we all know what that infamous year meant for the world, COVID-19.

All concerts were canceled through June 2021.

By then, the two top people directly responsible for hiring Salonen had left. In their place, a new leadership was assembled, Matthew Spivey and Priscilla Geeslin.

Melendez starts off the interview with a brutal opening volley:

“You will perhaps be remembered as the folks who let, quote, ‘a bucket-list, brilliant conductor, go.’ So a simple question to both of you, what the hell happened?“

Geeslin takes a deep (irritated?) breath. Spivey is the one who answers. He uses the same talking points that they’ve been pushing since the summer, before this whole affair really started snowballing down Mount Doom. If those talking points weren’t equal to the moment then (and they weren’t), they absolutely aren’t equal to the moment now. And the interesting thing is… Spivey sort of seems to know it? Throughout the entire interview he has the uncertain, uncomfortable air of a panicked high school student giving his first presentation.

He also doesn’t really answer the “what the hell?” question, either:

“You know, I think this is a moment of change for every arts organization, certainly in San Francisco but really across the country. We are seeing as arts organizations emerge coming out of the pandemic they are thinking differently about who they are and how they connect and relate to the world around them.”

I will grant Spivey that this is a moment of change. (Although I also think there’s a solid argument to be made that every moment is a moment of change for every arts organization.) And I agree that arts organizations are “thinking differently about who they are” and their relationships to their communities post-pandemic.

But.

Do you know what’s not happening in the industry? Generationally talented music directors departing in dramatic fashion, and a serious audience rebellion brewing over issues of governance. Maybe that’s a you problem, my friend.

Reality check: Major American orchestras have not responded to the pandemic by instituting long-term cuts in musician compensation.

I think it’s important to remember that major orchestras “thinking differently about who they are” does not mean that they are also embracing austerity and systematic stakeholder alienation.

Here is how the SFS’s peer orchestras have responded to the post-pandemic world when it comes to musician compensation.

  • In June 2022, the New York Philharmonic ratified a contract that took steps to restore cuts made during the early days of the pandemic. According to the Times, the “decision to restore pay is a milestone in the Philharmonic’s recovery, and it offered some hope that the worst of the pandemic, which cost the orchestra more than $27 million in anticipated ticket revenue, had passed.” 1 
  • In August 2023, the Boston Symphony Orchestra agreed to a three-year musician contract. The press release about it is coy as to exact figures, but it underlines that the contract includes “a ‘catch-up’ increase for the musicians following a three-year pandemic pause in their wages under the existing contract approved in 2020.” It also provides for greater scheduling flexibility for musicians. 2
  • In September 2023, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra agreed to a three-year musician contract that included 3% annual salary increase and increased benefits. 3
  • In October 2023, the Cleveland Orchestra agreed to a three-year musician contract that included “annual increases in minimum weekly compensation of 4 percent, 3 percent, and 3 percent, respectively, over three years, in addition to a one-time, $5,000 agreement ratification bonus each.” 4
  • In October 2023, the Philadelphia Orchestra agreed to a three-year contract that included “increases in the agreement [of] 6% in the first year, 4.5% in the second and 4.5% in the third.” 5
  • And circling back to the first bullet point, today, on 19 September 2024, the New York Philharmonic (very inconveniently for the San Francisco Symphony) announced a new contract, under which musicians will see a raise of 30% over the next three years. 6

(Note: I’m leaving the Los Angeles Philharmonic out of this because their pay packages include compensation associated with housing and it’s harder to compare contracts using an apples-to-apples approach.)

Spivey is right about one thing: American orchestras have been re-thinking their identity and their missions post-pandemic.

But the facts are clear: this re-thinking doesn’t include imposing concessionary contracts.

To be such an outlier in a relatively stable negotiation cycle like this one, as the SFS will be, is a leading indicator of major institutional instability. You never want to be in this position in the best of times, but you especially don’t want to be in it when you’re searching for a world-class music director, after you very publicly dumped your last one.

It goes without saying, if the SFS genuinely has to make these cuts to survive, it owes the public a detailed explanation as to exactly why. How has the SFS so dramatically underperformed its peers?

SFS leadership clearly views executing a music director’s vision as a budgetary “extra.”

Geeslin then takes a swing at the PR pinata. She describes an orchestra’s budget like this, in the context of Salonen’s expensive artistic vision:

“‘You sit around a table as a family and you say we have this much money, this is what we can spend this year. Do we take a vacation, do we not take a vacation, do we go out to dinner more, do we do less. It’s saying that this is the money we have to spend and this is how we’re going to utilize it to make sure that by the end of the year we still have a reasonable amount of money to move forward,’ stated Priscilla Geeslin, the Board Chair of the symphony.”

First off, if the stakeholders at the SFS are family sitting around a table, then there aren’t enough seats at that table. The musicians have been trying to sit down at the table for months to start contract negotiations. 7 But for a long time, management refused to set the table: i.e., they put off negotiating, presumably to ratchet up the pressure for as long as possible before the contract expiration date. Meanwhile, dissatisfied audience members are raising hell by holding up signs in Finnish, and have been threatened with expulsion from the dining room entirely. 8

Second off, it’s striking that Geeslin regards the expense of executing a music director’s vision as being in the same category as a “vacation” or “eating out less.”

Because…no???

If we absolutely must use a tortured “family budgeting while gathered round the kitchen table” metaphor, here’s a more accurate description of what’s going on:

  • One parent divorced the other beloved parent and doesn’t want him at the table, and refuses to go to therapy about it. The beloved parent has gone mute in public. Everyone has to pretend this is normal.
  • The kids are being asked to choose between extras like vacations and eating out.
  • Meanwhile, the proposed budget the parent is passing around is calling for only paying for part of the electric bill and mortgage.
  • There is no credible plan to increase household income. The best the children hear is platitudes about how hopefully the next spouse will help to increase the size of the household income pipeline over the next few years.
  • There is a search committee that has just been formed to find a new spouse. Everyone has the sinking feeling that no one in their right mind will want to marry into this family.
  • By the way, the spurned spouse was supposed to help increase the household income back when he joined the family — then, just like what happened to Conan O’Brien and The Tonight Show in 2009, was given no time to actually do that.
  • The parent is talking about spending $100 million renovating the house. 9
  • The entire time this circus is going on, there’s an inebriated sibling pounding on the window bellowing “Family therapy! Family therapy!” (That’s the patrons and patron advocates.)

Audience advocates dropping in on the SFS’s meeting at the family table

I grudgingly admit that some orchestras can be like families sometimes, but…let’s also be real. In the end, workplaces aren’t families. Hell, when money is at stake, most families stop being families.

In any case, I’d hope that serious people can recognize that workplaces are not families when the people on top are deciding how an $80 million dollar annual budget is going to be spent, and also have the power to lock out other members of their family.

We need a better metaphor.

“The best people in life are free” – Taylor Swift in “New Romantics” and also Matthew Spivey, apparently

Spivey then returns to yet another stale, months-old talking point:

“There is no question in my mind that the San Francisco Symphony is one of the most extraordinary ensembles in the world, period. And I think what defines that is not budget size. Some of the most impactful moments that we’ve made don’t necessarily cost much at all,” insisted Spivey.

What a mind-blowing paradigm shift. So you don’t actually get what you pay for? There’s no truth to that?

If budget size is so disconnected from outcomes, why is the San Francisco Symphony spending money on a CEO? Maybe artificial intelligence could perform this job for less, with better outcomes. How about we ChatGPT our way out of this thing? Some of the most impactful leadership suggestions don’t necessarily cost much at all.

Also, what exactly are these impactful moments that are happening for not “necessarily…much at all”? Share your tips, Mr. Spivey!

“And another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad” – dril (2014); also, SFS leadership (2024)

They both maintain there is no animosity between them and Salonen.

Oh, I’m sure. I imagine y’all are just super close. I bet you have picturesque picnics on Alamo Square every Saturday morning, and then you bicycle across the Golden Gate hand-in-hand, then you all go home and watch The Room eating popcorn giggling and pointing out all the local landmarks where you’ve spent time together. I’m sure.

Hilariously, the next paragraph is:

Salonen did not want to be interviewed for this story nor did he allow us to film any rehearsals or performances that include him.

And okay, so, yes, this is obviously funny because everyone living in reality can tell that the “no animosity” thing is a lie, or at the very least a desperately uncomfortable corporatization of human emotion.

But also. Take a step back. That lie says something, no? If they’re able to lie about something as obvious as this, what’s keeping them from lying about other things that aren’t so obvious?

The SFS leadership truly believes the problem is external, not internal

“We are committed to working with our musicians and I trust them, I really do. Our challenge is not an internal one, our challenge is an external one,” added Spivey.

Well, no. Reference the list of recently signed orchestra contracts above. I think it’s pretty clear the best case scenario here is that you have both internal and external challenges.

The symphony believes one way to attract audiences is to showcase what few cities have, a one-of-a-kind performing arts scene, which also includes the ballet, the opera, the SF Jazz Center, and the Conservatory.

“This is an incredible concentration of great art institutions and west of the Mississippi you don’t have a concentration like this,” explained Geeslin.

As soon as I read this, I saw a Drudge-Report-style siren gif flashing in my mind’s eye. This quote could easily be used as ammunition for the argument that that Geeslin, Spivey, and the board are chasing a pipe dream to merge the SFS with the San Francisco Opera.

It sounds nuts, but the two were once part of the same organization. And Patricia Geeslin’s husband, financier Keith Geeslin, is a former president of the San Francisco Opera.

Folks have been raising the possibility of this being a potential end game in places like the San Francisco Standard and on the site of SFS Patron Alliance, an audience advocate organization.

And look, I’m not taking sides about what’s real or what’s not regarding this rumor. But. Rightly or wrongly, the idea that the merger is a goal is in the public discourse, and this quote is not helping assuage folks’ fears.

To be clear, Spivey has gone on the record with the San Francisco Standard saying he “claims ignorance about these claims.” 10 But to skirt so close to a conspiracy theory by downplaying the symphony’s importance in the context of the city’s wider cultural identity is certainly…a choice.

At the very least, why do these people not understand optics 101?

The SFS leadership wants support without accountability

Melendez closes her interview with the question:

“What do you want viewers to get out of this interview?”

Geeslin answers:

I want them to come to the hall, I want them to come and support us. I want them to come and enjoy the music and our orchestra and to celebrate the San Francisco Symphony.

What’s left unspoken is that audience members who are upset about the organization’s direction have been profiled in the Chronicle. A woman who held up a sign with naughty Finnish words on it about the board was even threatened with being barred from the hall altogether. 11

So let’s be honest: Geeslin doesn’t want all viewers to come. She wants the viewers who agree with her to come to the hall. She wants viewers who support her governance choices to come to the hall. She wants viewers who are happy to see Salonen leave to come to the hall. (Of course the big problem there is that Salonen doesn’t seem to have a lot of anti-stans in San Francisco…)

If she thought otherwise, she’d engage in better faith with the people who disagree with her path forward. She’d express more remorse and humility for letting Salonen slip away. She’d have an actual plan, not just concepts of one.

Again and again, over the course of months, with plenty of opportunities to alter course or to moderate, both she and Spivey have demonstrated they don’t care about customers who disagree with their vision (such as it is).

After the 16-month-long Minnesota Orchestra lockout, that organization started making progress after 1) people at the top left, and 2) their replacements were game to do things like hold town hall meetings to listen to stakeholders’ concerns. That turnaround timing wasn’t coincidence.

I don’t know what else to say about these people. They aren’t serious. They aren’t participating in this desperately important conversation in good faith. They never have. They’ve decided on a destination, exact route TBD, and they are determined to stick with their plan, damn the torpedos. Meanwhile, their local media is skeptical of them, even aggressive toward them. Their patrons are pushing back. Their music director is embarking on a season-long cold war against them. Most urgently, their musicians are caught in an impossible situation, with their livings and careers potentially in the balance. It’s excruciating.

And that’s not even wading into the matter of the hardball that Spivey, Geeslin, and their associates are playing with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. According to AGMA, the SFS management is seeking to cut the chorus’s budget by 80%. 12 It is impossible to see this as anything but a shot across the bow directed not only to chorus members, but to the orchestra’s musicians and the pro-Salonen customer base generally. (As of 19 September, the chorus has voted to authorize a strike if necessary, meaning that opening night is in jeopardy. 13 )

Do you want to know who one of the most important local constituencies was when it came to rebuilding the shattered Minnesota Orchestra? Members of the Minnesota Chorale. Don’t mess with chorus people!

In the end, these people are not living in the real world with the rest of us. I don’t know why. Maybe because they don’t have to. They are metaphorically adrift in the San Francisco Bay, their only flotation device a set of arm floaties. Of course the inner workings of every major arts organization is different, and I don’t know who – if anyone – has the power to nudge the S.S. SFS in a new direction, one that might restore at least a modicum of seriousness, maturity, and credibility. But if that person or that group of people is waiting for a moment of crisis to step in, the time has come. The crisis is now.

Footnotes

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/arts/music/new-york-philharmonic-restore-musicians-pay.html ↩︎
  2. https://dgpuo8cwvztoe.cloudfront.net/uploads/Press-Releases/Boston-Symphony-Orchestra-Approves-New-Three-Year-Labor-Agreement.pdf  ↩︎
  3. https://cso.org/experience/article/15276/musicians-of-the-cso-and-the-csoa-vote-to-app ↩︎
  4. https://www.clevelandorchestra.com/globalassets/editorial/press-releases/2023/20231002_negotiations-statement_2023.pdf  ↩︎
  5. https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-orchestra-musicians-agree-3-year-labor-deal-salary-increase/ ↩︎
  6. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/arts/music/new-york-philharmonic-labor-deal.html ↩︎
  7. https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2024/06/20/san-francisco-symphony-troubled/ ↩︎
  8. https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/san-francisco-symphony-protest-ban-19550127.php ↩︎
  9. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/davies-symphony-hall-19651838.php ↩︎
  10. https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2024/06/20/san-francisco-symphony-troubled/ ↩︎
  11. https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/san-francisco-symphony-protest-ban-19550127.php ↩︎
  12. https://www.sfcv.org/articles/music-news/sf-symphony-chorus-faces-unprecedented-wage-cuts ↩︎
  13. https://www.sfcv.org/articles/music-news/sf-symphony-chorus-threatens-strike-opening-night-now-doubt ↩︎

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July 3, 2024 · 4:18 am

Sign of the Times at the San Francisco Symphony

There has been a seismic development in the ongoing San Francisco Symphony saga. A patron named Laura Leibowitz went to a concert this June and held up a sign during an applause break.

The Chronicle shared the terrifying details:

Amid growing public outrage over the Board of Governors’ failure to retain the acclaimed Finnish conductor [Esa-Pekka Salonen] beyond his five-year contract ending after the 2024-25 season, audience member Laura Leibowitz displayed a sign during the June 21 performance that read “F— the board” in Salonen’s native language. An image of her with the sign went viral on social media, increasing scrutiny of the organization’s direction and finances, prompting the organization to threaten a ban of Leibowitz in Davies Symphony Hall.

Fortunately, the orchestra’s senior director of operations immediately leapt into action, writing in a letter to Leibowitz, “Should this conduct occur again, you will be subject to further disciplinary action, up to and including removal from Davies Symphony Hall and/or suspension of privileges to enter and attend activities of the San Francisco Symphony.”

Leibowitz told the Chronicle that “a ban would be devastating, as she considers the local classical music community like family. She has reached out to the ACLU to consult her rights and is considering her next move.”

Leibowitz has been a regular concertgoer at the orchestra since 1991.

Obviously, there are many lessons to take away from this violent attack on our social and symphonic mores. I thought I’d break a few of them down.

Signs are the number one threat to an orchestra’s financial sustainability. Signs are widely recognized as a gateway drug to banners, which in turn is a gateway drug to organized applause-break chants. When one angry audience member sees another angry audience member indulging in the immoral behavior, the contagion spreads. And what happens if these loud lost souls move on to even harder drugs, such as the alcohol available in the lobby? This is a slippery slope. Every time an obscene Finnish sign is raised, the San Francisco Symphony’s accumulated deficit climbs by another million dollars. We are lucky that someone intervened when they did.

Women who have been attending the symphony since 1991 are the best demographic to alienate and antagonize. The more loyal the customer, the more urgent a matter it is to ban them from your business’s premises. All for-profit corporations know this, and it’s time we start running our non-profits more like for-profits. There is an old saying in the world of business: “The customer is always wrong.” Only the stupidest businessmen do not understand this.

The timeline of this particular audience rebellion is working in management’s favor. This was not Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final bow. He still has a year left to serve as music director. And the musicians’ contract doesn’t expire until November. So even if a multi-month strike or lockout happens and knocks out the back half of Salonen’s final season, this board versus patron conflict is going to keep escalating for four more months. Fortunately, during that time, audiences definitely won’t start connecting with each other, planning additional direct actions, brandishing dozens of signs at once, or reading and writing editorials and inflammatory blog entries. There is no precedent for that in American orchestral history.

It is totally normal for orchestra patrons to contact the ACLU about interactions they’ve had with an orchestra’s management. In fact, all responsibly-governed orchestras have an entire subset of patrons and subscribers who are constantly in talks with the ACLU. Truly, a long-time patron invoking the ACLU is a (and I hate to use this word, but…) sign that the orchestra is doing everything right. People in the industry know that every world-class orchestra’s tour to Carnegie Hall kicks off with a minimum of ten patrons complaining to the press that their civil liberties have been violated.

The San Francisco Symphony needs to keep writing threatening letters to patrons who will then immediately take those letters to the press, thereby publicizing them even more, giving other patrons ideas, and cementing the public press narrative of PR-Challenged Out-of-Touch Upper Management vs. Pissed Off Patrons. This is productive! It is a wise use of staff time and resources, and speaks well about the priorities within the organization. It will not make San Francisco Symphony employees’ working lives even more miserable than they already must be.

It is long past time for orchestras to start keeping a database of concertgoers (with mugshots). Fortunately for the San Francisco Symphony, it is located in Silicon Valley. So I think there could be a productive partnership to be struck here between the orchestra board and a tech company to create some kind of facial recognition database that could better track the identities and whereabouts of these sick sign perverts. Perhaps that database could even be monetized in some way, or the information scraped to train AI with. This could be an exciting cutting-edge partnership that will lure in future donors, thereby engorging the Silicon Valley donation pipeline, since (as we all remember) Salonen couldn’t get that particular job done in four years, two of which happened during a pandemic.

Fellow audience members should warn the orchestra administration if they witness — or even hear rumors about — other audience members partaking in crafts. Perhaps a hotline could be set up to report the subversives. Public service announcements discussing the dangers of permanent markers and cardstock could be made. To underline the gravity of the situation, letters in blue envelopes with the San Francisco Symphony’s seal on them could be sent to these people to let them know that they’re under investigation. Perhaps lie detectors have a role to play here. There are no bad ideas when you’re brainstorming.

Three words: cameras in bathrooms. Extreme? Perhaps. Necessary? Yes. Hall restrooms are prime spaces in which deviant activities (such as sign assemblage) can happen. The higher-ups must monitor the goings-on. (An auxiliary benefit to monitored bathrooms would be that upper management could see who has been using too much toilet paper, which will help push the San Francisco Symphony to both financial- and eco- sustainability. We in the orchestra industry call that a win-win!)

Moving forward, every San Francisco Symphony patron must undergo a full body search before entering the concert hall. Now, this may sound extreme, but remember: we live in a post-Signgate world. Paper is more insidious than a firearm, because paper cannot be found by metal detectors. Paper is a flat substance, and, terrifyingly, can be folded. Music lovers must demand safety. If elderly volunteer ushers have to strip search us so that we can hear Mahler 3 live, then that’s the price we must pay. Great art requires great sacrifice.

Orchestras would benefit from maintaining their own paramilitary forces. Think about it. What happens if Laura Leibowitz fails to obey authority, even after being warned in a sternly worded letter that she faces a San Francisco Symphony ban? If she dares to enter and raise a second obscene Finnish sign, what is stopping her from attending a third time for, say, Bruckner’s seventh symphony (besides Bruckner’s seventh symphony)? No, she must face consequences. Of course, there’s a big problem here: the orchestra as it exists today does not have the manpower to make good on their warnings. Who is going to take Liebowitz into custody if she doesn’t comply? If I may borrow an apocryphal quote from Andrew Jackson, “The San Francisco Symphony has made its decision. Now let it enforce it.” What better way to solve this issue besides maintaining a standing army of mercenary fighters headquartered in the box office (this area could also serve as a detainment facility)? I live in hope: I believe that law enforcement can be trained so that Ms. Leibowitz can be removed from the premises without distracting other concertgoers. Her removal could be planned to coincide with brass fanfares.

In conclusion, I hope it’s clear to everyone now that these are the only paths forward to quell dissent and fulfill the orchestra’s mission statement “to inspire and serve audiences and communities throughout the Bay Area and the world through the power of musical performance.” And I know that all of my fellow orchestra lovers will agree with me.

Fortunately, there is absolutely nothing else going on right now at the San Francisco Symphony that requires management’s attention. By my count, the only problems are a music director abandoning ship, a stalled search for a new music director, an ongoing audience mutiny, an expiring musicians’ contract, a rapidly worsening PR crisis, and crippling amounts of debt. The orchestra is extremely lucky to have time to give this truly terrifying incident the attention it deserves.

I’ve been writing about orchestras for about fifteen years now, and people from Wisconsin are great writers, so I took the liberty of tossing together a few sentences that the SFS management is welcome to use or adapt when they announce the new regulations.

The executive order that the orchestra president will sign will expand security investigations to all levels of balconies, facilitating the coordination of the efforts among various departments, including the Ushers Unit, the Toilet Paper Usage Investigation Committee, and the SFS Sign Deviants Unit. Those accused and investigated will be judged based on their trustworthiness and whether they are able to commit donations that would leave them susceptible to coercion. These are people the rest of us consider sad, sick, even pathetic. Note that an investigation about concealed signage may be commenced based on the accusation of a fellow audience member, even if the fellow audience member prefers to remain anonymous. One of my friends said the other day, why worry about those individuals? You don’t claim they’re all pro-Salonen, do you? The answer is obviously no. Some of them are very energetic, very loyal patrons. Some of them have that unusual affliction through no fault of their own. We’re not disturbed about them because of their morals. We’re disturbed about them because they are dangerous to this concert hall. Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the San Francisco Symphony.

*

Proposed orchestral soundtrack for the background music to the speech:

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June 22, 2024 · 5:58 am

So The San Francisco Symphony Is On Fire…

Today we’re going to be looking at an editorial in The San Francisco Standard.

It has quite the extraordinary title: Hear that? It’s the sound of the San Francisco Symphony setting itself on fire.

First things first, please go read the piece. As unforgivably long as this entry is, there’s so much more in the editorial that does not appear here.

Plus, I want reporting on the San Francisco Symphony to get views. Everyone, especially the San Francisco Symphony, should want that.

So go, read it, take your time, pump up those analytics, and report back.

Here are my takeaways:

Writer Adam Lashinsky is a serious person

Let’s start with the background of the author of this piece.

He is a professional writer on the roster of Chartwell Speakers, and his biography appears in full on their website. 1

This (slightly outdated) biography states:

  • “He has written about Silicon Valley and Wall Street since 2001.”
  • “He is a weekly panelist on the Fox News Channel’s ‘Cavuto on Business’ program on Saturday mornings.”
  • “His first book, Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired – and Secretive – Company Really Works, was published in 2012 and was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.”
  • “His second book Wild Ride: Inside Uber’s Quest for World Domination released in May 2017 has been nominated for the Financial Times and Mckinsey Business Book of the Year.”

Clearly, this is not some impractical artiste with his head in the clouds.

(This is also not some thirty-something lady blogger who cosplays as a journalist some weekends, has a reputation as a hysteric, and chose an 1890 painting of a girl playing a violin as her website’s header image.)

No, this is someone with real credentials. Lashinsky has written about the intersection of finance and power for decades. McKinsey (!) wanted to award his book a prize. Heck, he has shaken Neil Cavuto’s hand, presumably regularly. And he is a man. He is clearly a serious person.

This is not someone who can be brushed off easily.

Keep an eye open for Cynthia Hersey

Lashinsky opens his editorial with a description of a high-dollar donors’ gathering held this past February at the home of Board of Governors chair, Priscilla Geeslin.

Apparently it turned awkward quickly. While there, music director Esa-Pekka Salonen opened up about his belief that planned cuts were going to hurt the reputation and quality of the orchestra.

Donor Cynthia Hersey compared Salonen’s comments to a bomb dropping, and went on the record to say, “It let me know he was not a happy man. And it reflected his knowledge of the cuts that were coming.”

This is not the first time that Hersey has pulled the fire alarm. On May 11th, she, like Lashinsky, wrote a San Francisco Standard editorial about the situation. 2 It sounds like she understands the stakes, and has a theory of the case: “This isn’t just about losing a brilliant music director; it’s a wake-up call highlighting deeper issues within the symphony’s leadership and governance.”

Keep an eye on what Hersey says, writes, and does. During similar orchestral labor disputes of the past fifteen years in Detroit, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Baltimore, and other cities, audience advocate groups (most of them employing variations on the name “Save Our Symphony”) introduced new dynamics and new wrinkles to the traditional musician/management conflict. I don’t know Ms. Hersey or anything about her, but she seems like a prime candidate to ascend to a leadership position in a hypothetical Save Our San Francisco Symphony organization. I’m looking forward to hearing more from her.

CEO Matthew Spivey and board chair Priscilla Geeslin had a really difficult interview with Lashinsky.

Back to Lashinsky:

“The bottom line is that we’re both very optimistic about the future of the San Francisco Symphony,” CEO Matthew Spivey told me recently in a joint interview with Geeslin in his office at Davies Symphony Hall. “At the same time, we have to be honest with ourselves about where we stand. We’re facing some very real financial challenges.”

It’s not entirely clear, though, how dire those challenges are…

It looks like they lost Lashinsky within the course of one meeting.

(Also, as a side note, it’s interesting that they’re appearing together as a united front during these interviews, and continuing to leave Salonen out of them.)

The SFS leadership team is deeply worried about deficits and nabbing big dollar donations.

Spivey says the symphony had an $11 million operating deficit in its most recent fiscal year. But that’s only true if you leave out an “extraordinary” $15.1 million donation from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation following an auction of its art collection in 2022. “That was a very, very special gift,” Spivey says. “It is not something that you would expect to be repeated.” 

Well, yeah. At the risk of being a condescending Captain Obvious, if you leave out your gifts, every orchestra is going to run a deficit.

The traditional rule of financing thumb for a major orchestra is: one-third of income should come from donations, one-third from the endowment, and one-third from earned income like ticket sales or venue rental. This can actually vary quite a bit from ensemble to ensemble, but donations – even, especially “extraordinary” ones – are always a big part of the puzzle. It’s the whole non-profit model.

As for deficits, different leaders in the orchestra world have different ideas about what they mean and how they should be attacked. Some of these leaders have impressive real-world track records. Some of them don’t.

One of the people who does have a track record is Deborah Borda, the closest thing that the orchestra administration world has to a rock star. She accomplished great things heading the Los Angeles Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic. She hates cutting budgets, preferring to grow and innovate out of a financial problem. If you’re thinking, “That sounds like an approach that Salonen would appreciate!”, you are correct; the two worked together in Los Angeles and apparently remain great friends to this day.

In April 2019, Borda appeared on the Business of Giving radio show in New York City. The host asked her, “What’s your approach to managing finances of an arts institution like the New York Philharmonic?” Her reply:

It’s pretty straightforward, but one of the places you have to start is that even if we sell out David Geffen Hall… or if you sold out Walt Disney Concert Hall, that covers only about half of the cost of putting on a concert…

So, we are genuinely a not for-profit organization. When we’re doing great, we’re losing money. So, you have to think of it first of all in that context and really educate your board to understand that, because the future of the orchestras will not be in earning more money. It will be in philanthropy.

She goes on to explain in more detail what she believes the solution should be:

But I think, in addition to that, the next step is to really build a vision that the institution shares and moves towards. And when people share a vision, they’re inspired by it. They move towards it. You can then put the kind of mechanics in place that can raise the money that you need.3

By the way, remember the name Deborah Borda. We’re coming back to her. (Multiple times.)

Borda isn’t the only one who thinks this who has also delivered tangible results.

Kevin Smith, the CEO who dragged the Minnesota Orchestra out of an agonizing musician lockout that lasted from 2012-2014, memorably told a skeptical local news outlet in the summer of 2015:

There is nothing you can do to establish in perpetuity the [complete] financial security of an arts organization.4

Does that mean that an orchestra’s financial stability isn’t important? Of course not. But financial stability can’t be the orchestra’s reason for being.

The SFS is giving fewer concerts, but expenses are rising

Back to Lashinsky:

The symphony has been spending heavily on its own fundraising and administrative costs in recent years. Between 2018 and 2023, for example, development costs jumped 31% while administrative expenses more than doubled. In other words, the symphony’s leadership is cutting programming–which led to the loss of its conductor–even as it is spending more to run the place. 

Interestingly, before its 2012-2014 lockout, the Minnesota Orchestra leadership team did a somewhat similar thing.

In November 2013, audience advocacy group Save Our Symphony Minnesota presented an obsessively researched 82-slide Powerpoint about the orchestra’s finances, without the Minnesota Orchestra leadership team’s approval or assistance.5 (In our defense, it was winter, we need things to do, and when the orchestra isn’t playing…)

One of the many striking charts was this one, tracing the relationship between total earned revenue and number of classical subscription concerts.

Because so many employees at an orchestra are paid annual salaries rather than paid per event, past a certain point, reducing concerts arguably proved to be a drag on the organization’s productivity.

I’m not saying that the SFS situation is identical to the Minnesota one, but the parallel felt striking. Plus, I never pass up any opportunity to share that ten-year-old Powerpoint. The link to the entire presentation in video form is here. I want budding audience advocates to discover it and be inspired. History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it can rhyme.

The SFS put up a huge amount of financial information on its website – but claims it needs more context to answer basic questions

Again, back to Lashinsky:

(Those figures come from the symphony’s publicly disclosed audited financial reports. The symphony, however, says they lack context and don’t reflect changes in its accounting. It contends that such factors show a less than 1% increase in development costs and a 10% jump in administrative costs.)

The San Francisco Symphony has posted roughly twelve years of 990s and audited financial statements on their website.6 This is an extremely unusual level of dedication to paperwork, and I applauded their transparency in my last entry.7

However.

I just opened each one up (because what else do people do on Friday nights? enjoy the warmth and companionship of other human beings? I don’t think so!), and my very rough rushed back-of-the-envelope calculation is that, between all of these 990s and audited financial statements, the San Francisco Symphony has made available 1,083 pages of context.

My copy of Don Quixote is 940 pages and the audiobook takes 39 hours and 37 minutes to read.

Not sponsored by Audible!

So I guess my question is, what went wrong with this orchestra’s comms strategy that a thousand-plus pages wasn’t enough context? 

Negotiating the new musician contract hasn’t started yet, because…reasons…?

Another financial elephant in the room is that the symphony’s contract with its unionized musicians expires in late November, with a strike entirely possible. It certainly is in management’s interests to cite a cash crunch as a prelude to contentious bargaining. Spivey, who will head the negotiations, said talks have not begun. 

A spokesperson for the musicians said they offered to begin talks over the summer to resolve the issue early, but the administration declined. A symphony spokesperson said that formal bargaining will begin in the fall: “We all agree that swift negotiations are the best path forward, and we are on the same page to build the groundwork for that.”

I’m sorry, what? What do you mean? What do you mean?

Let’s be clear: there is nothing holding these people back from starting negotiations now. They do not have to treat their negotiations in the same way that a high school writer would treat her physics assignments. (I failed physics.)

Even extremely damaged symphony orchestras have proven that negotiations can be completed successfully and early, if all stakeholders want it badly enough and there’s a baseline level of trust and goodwill.

After the six-month-long Detroit Symphony strike in 2010, musicians and management renewed their next contract eight months early. 8

That was impressive. But a few years later, the Minnesota Orchestra went even faster. Kevin Smith was hired as interim CEO in May 2014, a few months after the sixteen month lockout ended. He became adored by audiences as intensely as his lockout-happy predecessor had been loathed. In December 2014, Smith dropped the interim from his title, and by May 2015, Smith and the musicians had quietly negotiated a contract that extended out to the end of the 2019/2020 season. That contract renewal happened a stunning 21 months before expiration.

MinnPost reported:

The new contracts were negotiated privately among staff and musicians, with no press, attorneys or board members present. “I think it’s a great way to negotiate,” Smith said. “Small and informal and quiet.”

Zavadil agreed. “We came into this process very receptive to what Kevin was proposing: that it would be quiet, very collaborative and very open. That’s the way it went. As the process went along, we became more comfortable with each other. We were able to speak more and more freely, and that is what has enabled us to get here today.”9

So the question has to be asked:

If Kevin Smith pulled off that negotiation sixteen months out from the longest major orchestra lockout in American history, what’s keeping Spivey and company from doing the same?

Management isn’t looking for Salonen’s replacement, because…reasons…?

Spivey also said that neither he nor the board have begun searching for Salonen’s replacement, a process that at other symphonies has taken years. 

This is insane. Salonen announced his departure three months ago, and it’s very clear that this relationship was on the rocks for a long time before that.

Let’s look closer at timelines.

According a December 2018 New York Times article, Salonen was approached about the San Francisco Symphony gig in August 2018 and signed the contract in December 2018, with his tenure set to begin in September 2020. 10

Now, in 2018, did we know that 2020 was going to end with John Oliver striding across an abandoned quarry and then spending a season’s worth of the Last Week Tonight budget to blast a giant stage in the shape of the numbers 2020 into fiery oblivion while uttering “f*ck you, 2020; get f***ed” and staring into viewers’ souls to the soaring strains of Holst and Strauss? No. No, we did not.

God, we were really going through it back then

But you know what? Point still stands. You yourselves reached out to your potential music director in August 2018 and expected him to start two years later.

The Minnesota Orchestra’s Esa-Pekka Salonen is Osmo Vänskä, i.e, its own Finnish maestro who endured an excruciating professional crisis while caught in the malfunctioning gears of late-stage American capitalism. (The whole affair is worthwhile research for any San Francisco patrons.) After Vänskä announced he was leaving, the orchestra spent four years finding his successor Thomas Søndergård. 11 Yes, some of that search overlapped with the pandemic, but, again, point still stands.

Deborah Borda – remember her? – actually turned into a stalker to bag Gustavo Dudamel. I am not joking. Apparently he thought she was trying to seduce him. In the April 2019 interview I referenced earlier, she said:

It’s a funny story, I couldn’t get him to sign a contract to be Music Director. Every orchestra in the world was chasing after him actually – the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony. So, I followed him around the world. He, of course, tells the story much better than I do it. First he thought I was a stalker. He decided I was just a… I had a crush on him. I am old enough to be his mother but, he thought… maybe.12

These are the lengths that serious people from serious orchestras go to to secure and retain a serious music director. But the people at the top of the San Francisco Symphony are not serious people.

Salonen performs his last concerts as music director in a year. Just in case you need a reminder of how time works, a year is in a year.

Wait, if they aren’t negotiating with their musicians or a new music director, what is the leadership team doing right now?

Lashinsky didn’t ask this question, but I want to. I’m guessing the answer has to do with planning labor dispute war games? We know it’s not studying comms or PR.

With Salonen gone, the San Francisco Symphony is explicit about the fact it will have no artistic vision

Unfortunately, beyond cutting music-related costs, Spivey and Geeslin don’t seem to have a particularly clear picture of what they want the symphony to be. I asked them to articulate their vision, expecting to hear something ambitious, like being the best orchestra in the land or championing living composers over dead ones. Instead, I got talking points. 

Spivey rattled off three goals: to bring in new audiences, increase the donor pipeline, and “live within the means that we have.” Geeslin praised the “incredible” orchestra and the team behind it while echoing Spivey’s desire to be “cautious” in its approach to finances. 

This is only my second or third blog entry on this fiasco, but I am already so goddamn tired of hearing about this goddamn “pipeline.” Shut it down. Nobody is donating to an orchestra because they want to be part of a big pipeline. Your patrons are not petroleum. Again: goddamn.

Also, remember Deborah Borda’s 2019 words of wisdom?

But I think, in addition to that, the next step is to really build a vision that the institution shares and moves towards. And when people share a vision, they’re inspired by it. They move towards it. You can then put the kind of mechanics in place that can raise the money that you need.

So where is the vision? In your fantasy, everyone’s donating and new audiences are showing up for — what, exactly?

But wait: what if all of this is a real-life marriage story that reads like a rejected B-plot from Succession?

Strange rumors are also swirling. Chatter is emanating from musician groups that Geeslin—whose husband, financier Keith Geeslin, is a former president of the San Francisco Opera—is plotting to merge the two august organizations. It’s a suggestion that, on the one hand, is far-fetched—Spivey claims ignorance about these claims. But it is also conceivable, given that for decades, the city’s symphony and opera were, in fact, one organization.

I won’t speculate on this one, but I do have to admit, I hate that this makes a lot of things that don’t currently make sense, make more sense. To be clear, it’s a terrible idea, but it does sort of vaguely explain some motivations.

If it’s at all remotely true, I once again express my frustration that it is the curse of the orchestra-loving public to be forever held captive by the emotional, social, and psychological issues of the financier class. Sometimes it feels like patrons serve no purpose except to be the blurry background figures in their personal Shakespearean tragedies. To any multi-millionaires or billionaires reading, if your pasttimes include plotting to merge major American arts organizations with the help of your spouse, just — stop. There are other hobbies.

Deborah Borda really does not like these people!

Salonen, meanwhile, almost certainly isn’t changing his mind about leaving San Francisco when his contract expires. He declined through the symphony to comment. But his friend Deborah Borda, the former CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic, told me, “I have never seen him freer and more forward-focused.”

Borda knew exactly what she was doing with this quote: she’s embarrassing (humiliating?) Spivey and Geeslin. She’s painting them as stumbling amateurs who, in the words of one American songwriter, “lost the one real thing [they’ve] ever known.” She’s talking about them to the press like they’re Salonen’s controlling ex. I will go further: this is Deborah Borda singing Good Luck, Babe on Salonen’s behalf to the San Francisco Symphony management.

“You’re reading too much into this!” you may say. No! No, I’m not. Sometimes things are meant to be read into. Deborah Borda is the queen not just of orchestra management, but of image management. She is friends with Esa-Pekka Salonen; she worked with him in Los Angeles; Salonen was the man who introduced her to Dudamel. She was always going to be furious about any even perceived mistreatment or disrespect.

I do not know why you would want to piss off Deborah Borda, but also I’m not the one who dumped Salonen off a figurative San Francisco wharf.

Adam Lashinsky is out for blood, too

The last sentence of this editorial made me clutch my Midwestern pearls.

Now it will be up to San Francisco audiences to decide for themselves if the moves the current symphony leadership makes to replace Salonen are up to snuff–or if they need replacing themselves.

Let’s take a step back. Adam Lashinsky, who writes about finance for a living, was so unimpressed after talking to these people and researching what they’re doing that he was willing to write an editorial and finish it by just casually throwing out the idea of regime change. I mean, I won’t complain about it, but damn.

I think most people would agree that the modern era of orchestral labor disputes began in 2010 in Detroit. Over the last fifteen years, I’ve watched all of them in real time, commenting on some, just watching others. But I have never seen a public turn so hard on a leadership team before the negotiations between musicians and management even officially began.

I hope very much that I’m wrong, but it sure seems like this is going to be an absolutely wild debacle.

So what should patrons and donors do now?

What I would say to any patrons of the San Francisco Symphony who want to push back…

Organize. Bring your friends. (Make new ones!) Dive into those 990s. Recruit your writers, your bloggers, your artists, your social media mavens, your analysts, your donors. Raise money for your research and to support musicians. Click on all of the articles and spend time reading them so the fickle analytics gods are happy. Be annoying. Read up on past orchestral apocalypses; so many audiences have gone through similar travails before, and what seems intractable at first isn’t necessarily. Have hope. Be feisty.

Basically, get ready to fight for the idea that a small handful of people should not hold vetoes over the identities of our great American orchestras. Because if anyone is going to stop this fiery nonsense in San Francisco, it’s going to be you.

Sources

  1. https://www.chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/adam-lashinsky/ ↩︎
  2. https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2024/05/11/san-francisco-symphony-financial-crisis/  ↩︎
  3. https://denver-frederick.com/2019/04/30/9167/ ↩︎
  4. https://www.minnpost.com/twin-cities-business/2015/08/does-minnesota-orchestra-have-sustainable-labor-contracts/ ↩︎
  5. http://www.saveoursymphonymn.org/uploads/2/2/7/7/22773088/sosmn_presentation_the_moa_debacle_corrected_v2.pdf ↩︎
  6. https://www.sfsymphony.org/About-SFS/Impact-Financials ↩︎
  7. https://songofthelarkblog.com/2024/06/06/the-second-problem-of-the-san-francisco-symphony/ ↩︎
  8. https://songofthelarkblog.com/2017/09/27/following-up-on-leonard-slatkins-book-leading-tones/ ↩︎
  9. https://www.minnpost.com/artscape/2015/05/new-era-solidified-v-nsk-musicians-sign-multiyear-contracts-minnesota-orchestra/ ↩︎
  10. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/arts/music/san-francisco-symphony-esa-pekka-salonen.html ↩︎
  11. https://www.minnesotaorchestra.org/press-room/press-releases/thomas-sondergard-debuts-as-minnesota-orchestra-music-director-designate-leading-the-right-of-spring/ ↩︎
  12. https://denver-frederick.com/2019/04/30/9167/ ↩︎

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June 6, 2024 · 3:38 am

The Second Problem of the San Francisco Symphony

Yesterday the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article headlined “How will S.F. Symphony navigate through crisis? Its leaders discuss the future in first interview.”

The authors spoke with Chief Executive Matthew Spivey and Board President Priscilla Geeslin. Awkwardly, only the ghost of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen was present.

The San Francisco Symphony finds itself at a turning point. Along with the New York Philharmonic and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, they are in the middle of musician/management negotiations. San Francisco’s contract expires in late November. They also recently got word they’re losing their music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who announced back in March (in his own separately released statement, no less) that he would not be renewing his contract due to fundamental disagreements with the orchestra’s board of directors. The official management response to the loss of one of the most sought-after music directors in the world has been a resounding “meh.” Patrons are crying about it. Now the orchestra is steaming full speed ahead toward triple icebergs: leadership loss, a potential work stoppage, and financial crisis.

Before we start, here’s my personal theory of the case:

The San Francisco Symphony is dealing with two separate problems. (The word “problem” is underselling it. They’re crises, really.) The two are entangled, but they’re fundamentally separate.

The First Problem is whatever happened to them financially between 2010 and 2024.

The Second Problem is, there’s a leadership problem. There’s a communications problem. There’s a values problem. There’s a respect problem.

Everything else I’ll ever have to say about this leadership team will be colored by that assumption: that there is a money problem, and then, apart from that, a vision problem.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in and read some tea leaves.

The San Francisco Symphony has experienced a tumultuous period since Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen announced his decision not to renew his five-year contract. 

“I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does,” Salonen offered as the impetus for stepping down from the role after the 2024-25 season in a statement released on March 14. 

Since then, it has come to light that the 113-year-old orchestra has struggled with budget deficits for more than a decade, with the 2022-23 season expenses at $78.6 million and revenue only at $67.4 million.

Okay. So. Temporarily bypassing the whole pushing-your-music-director-until-he-goes-overboard bit… Numbers. Budgets. Timelines. Deficits. These are facts. These are verifiable. These are the building blocks to creating a shared reality: the first step to solving the First Problem.

By the way, if you want to dig into the First Problem, you should! To entice you, here’s as brief a summary as I can muster, conveniently formatted in one long run-on paragraph so the normal people can skip it.

The San Francisco Symphony maintains an invaluable online archive of 990s and audited financial reports. For context, this is much more information than American orchestras traditionally provide to patrons on their websites. However, in this particular context, where we need to assemble a timeline of the past decade-plus to fact-check claims, it’s a double-edged sword: yes, it’s a lot of information, but also…it’s a lot of information. Many geological epochs ago, I wrote a lot about my hometown band, the Minnesota Orchestra; I return to their example a lot. They provide an annual year-in-review report that includes mission highlights and simplified financials. (Sample here.) By contrast, the SFS separates those two things in their reporting. They have a Season Review / Impact Report about their artistic accomplishments, but that document doesn’t include any financials, so you have to rely on 990s and financial reports for numbers. The SFS’s 990s and dense financial reports can be tough for a normal person to extract meaningful information from, but yesterday afternoon I tried my best. Check out the sixth page of the audited financial statement for what seemed to me to be the best overall summary of what’s going on. The 2023 financial report records “total revenues and releases” of $89,416,000 and “total expenses” of $83,179,000. Now obviously a non-profit orchestra is not making $6 million in profit annually. It just looks that way because of the comparatively complicated way that the SFS has chosen to summarize its finances for laypeople. Back in March, Janos Gareben at the San Francisco Classical Voice actually tried digging into this and even contacted the orchestra to get some clarification. A SFS spokesperson told him that “the $144.9 million shown on the [990 form for fiscal year 2022] includes ‘realized’ gains from investments but does not include ‘unrealized’ gains or losses.” Still, it appears that Gareben wasn’t able to completely untangle the numbers, either, as his ultimate conclusion about them was “Fiscal year 2021 showed revenues of $66 million against expenses of $53 million, and fiscal year 2020 had revenues of $65 million against expenses of $73 million.” To the best of my knowledge, no outsider has done a deep-dive on these numbers to explain to the layperson, so my understanding of how exactly the orchestra got from there to the deficits is mushy. To be clear, I’m not saying anyone cooked any books or anything like that. I’m just saying, there is so much information here, and the SFS is such a behemoth of an organization, it’s tough to find the story inside the numbers without an expert, given the veritable ocean of information we have right now.

Orchestra CEOs around the country will agree: I am not someone who should be interpreting 990s. I make my living writing about dead people. So until some independent outsider steps in to untangle all this – (dare I hope, a member of the press?) – I can’t offer much commentary about the San Francisco Symphony’s First Problem.

However, as a patron who has watched organizational implosions awfully similar to this one for years and years, I can offer commentary about the San Francisco Symphony’s Second Problem. That’s the ground I’m most comfortable on, anyway. So let’s move on to that.

Salonen has declined to speak publicly about the Symphony or his impending departure.

But in a joint interview with the Chronicle, CEO Matt Spivey and Board President Priscilla Geeslin addressed the organization’s challenges and future plans.

It is so striking to me how Salonen has ghosted these people. Either that, or he wasn’t invited to the interview in the first place. Which would be insane, because yes, he announced his departure in March, but he doesn’t actually leave until June 2025. I know this because the San Francisco Symphony press room announced his June 2025 departure as the “culmination” of his contract.

That’s one way to announce a breakup! “My husband announced our divorce as the culmination of our relationship following the completion of our marriage contract.” From this press release.

Lest we forget, the headline of this piece is: “How will S.F. Symphony navigate through crisis? Its leaders discuss the future in first interview.” Guys, you can like it or not, but Esa-Pekka Salonen is the San Francisco Symphony’s leader, and involved in navigating the crisis. He should be here.

I’m curious, did the reporters ask why he wasn’t? Did they leave an empty podium? An empty chair? Did they set a place setting for him at coffee? I’ve heard he’ll drink coffee without cream.

If you normally don’t follow orchestras, I cannot underline to you enough how weird it is for a music director to be absent from a high-profile article about the orchestra’s future. Sure, he’s a lame duck, but he’s the duck with the baton! And healthy orchestras respect their ducks, even when they’re lame! This metaphor is getting away from me.

“We as an organization have the opportunity to be a major part of the revitalization of this city and its incredible arts and culture ecosystem,” Spivey said at Davies Symphony Hall.

“Sometimes the most interesting and creative ideas have been born out of a limitation or a restriction in some way.”

I’m sorry, what?

I made this when I was a child and had no money for a real violin. Was this a new business model all along??

From this point on, the article turns into an search engine optimized Q&A because…sure. Why not?

What is the current financial situation at the San Francisco Symphony?

“Last season, we were facing what would have been roughly an $11 million deficit on a roughly $80 million budget,” Spivey said. But thanks to what he called “extraordinary, one-time contributions,” the organization has stayed afloat. Moving forward, the Symphony says it is planning within realistic financial resources and focusing on building a stronger philanthropic base. 

“It’s important going forward as we expand the range of our programming, that we have the opportunity to connect to a broader audience,” Spivey said, highlighting the need to develop relationships with new potential donors. 

Okay. Sounds like Spivey and Geeslin are looking for a music director who might want to rethink the funding model, rethink audience development, reanalyze outreach, etc.

Someone who (and I’m just spitballing here) might say something like, “I felt that orchestras, even before the pandemic, were facing a challenging time, especially in this country but also globally. The funding model needs to be rethought. The audience development needs to be rethought. The outreach needs to be reanalyzed.”

*tapping my earpiece* I’m sorry? That was Esa-Pekka Salonen in May 2022 in an article entitled “Why he decided to choose San Francisco: Salonen chalks it up to fate”? Well. Okay.

Are there projections for future deficits in the 2024-2025 season?

The budget for the 2024-2025 season is still under consideration. 

My reaction to this:

“We’ve had a lot of conversation internally as we’ve been doing the planning for ’24-’25 and beyond,” Spivey explained, “to make sure we understand what level of resources we have and what we can expect in terms of ticket sales and the philanthropic pipeline going forward.” 

This timing feels batsh*t.

Spivey just said they’re working with an $80 million annual budget. The San Francisco Symphony’s fiscal year starts on September first. That’s in eighty-seven days. Like…is he still considering minor budget adjustments or is he talking major ones? Are there questions about the level of resources he has? What’s all happening in that pipeline? What are the projections? What’s the plan? What do you mean?

In short, how much improv is happening within an eighty million dollar budget for a season that starts in eighty-seven days? The repertoire has been announced. The guest artists have been booked. We already know that. Again:

So I guess there are a few potential interpretations here. Either this is a lie, or a misquote or misunderstanding, or just bull…or there’s an unspoken insinuation that there’s a big ticket item that’s still being negotiated.

And I wonder what that could be…

From this press release.

How will the financial situation affect the Symphony Gala on Sept. 25?

Oh, thank God someone asked.

Geeslin stated the “biggest departure” during the annual event is…

Me, timidly: Salonen?

Geeslin stated the “biggest departure” during the annual event is the scaling back of the pre-performance reception, and the elimination of the Symphony’s elaborately decorated tent for the dinner and after-party.

Oh. Well. Close.

This has the same energy as Ruth Bukater standing on the deck of the Titanic and calling “WILL THE LIFEBOATS BE SEATED ACCORDING TO CLASS?”

Any room for a gentleman, gentlemen?

But thank God we got the reporting on the elaborately decorated after-party dinner tent. We needed to know the fate of the elaborately decorated after-party dinner tent.

Are there efforts to attract new donors from the tech and venture capital sectors?

Yes, the Symphony is actively seeking to build relationships with new donors across the Bay Area. But Spivey noted that what’s “really important to understand is that the time it takes to build a relationship, when they arrive at a place where they’re deeply invested and feel inspired to give philanthropically, is long… it takes anywhere from seven to 14 years for donors to mature in that way.”

Butbutbutbutbut! You did – you – you already – you did the thing already! About this! You hired Salonen! A big part of the answer to attracting these new donors was supposed to be hiring Salonen! Who, by the way, you did not push to keep to give seven to fourteen years to. Am I crazy? Do we not live in the same reality? You’d been addressing this! Then you undid what you started doing to address this! Without acknowledging you ever undid what you started doing to address this!

Are there plans to expand the board and set minimum trustee-giving levels?

They said the Symphony is always looking to expand its board. 

“Right now, our board sits at about 50 people, and we can go all the way up to 80,” Geeslin said. 

All current board members give at the Maestro Circle level ($15,000 minimum).

“Some people think having a board minimum, you leave money on the table. I’m of the mind that we ask people to give at a certain level when they come in and then, of course, they will hopefully give more,” Spivey said.

Well, my first concern is obviously:

Will people even want to join without an elaborately decorated after-party dinner tent?

My second concern is… I know I’m just a writer, but, with effort, I can handle the calculation. Thirty more people, times a fifteen thousand minimum, equals… $450,000.

And that’s great. If we can find thirty more people with $15,000 a year to spare who also want to jump aboard a sinking ship with a reputation for organizational dysfunction, that’s a hypothetical whole entire $450,000. And that’s not nothing!

It’s also 38% of the 2024 median listing home price in San Francisco.

So…you know. That’s cool. That’ll…help.

What are the plans for renovating Davies Symphony Hall?

Funding to evaluate potential changes to the Symphony’s home venue ahead of its 50th anniversary in 2030 has long been secured, but any plans for the renovation are in the preliminary stages.

The current goal is to get the entitlement from the city that would allow the possibility of renovation ahead of any historic landmark status for Davies that may restrict the process.

“We began working with the architect Mark Cavagnero to imagine what a potential renovation could look like,” said Spivey. 

“There’s no obligation to rush into a renovation project,” added Spivey. 

I’m glad to see that the savings from the elaborately decorated after-party dinner tent are going to be re-invested in the venue proper.

I think a lot of people who haven’t watched similar disputes play out over the years are really going to be stuck on this. The orchestra can find the money to spend multiple hundreds of millions of dollars on a building but not enough to close a budget deficit? And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but honestly? It’s possible.

Here’s a tough-to-swallow truth about big ticket donors and foundations. They love edifices. This is a whole documented phenomenon. You can look it up. It’s been nicknamed the “edifice complex.”

I’m generalizing, but in many communities, it’s common for donors to be more interested in funding buildings than day-to-day operations. Why? Operations are ephemeral. You can’t carve your name on them. They don’t offer the same professional or social cachet. A performance is here today, gone tomorrow. But a building is something concrete you can show your friends, your colleagues, your rivals, for decades to come. You can even throw corporate parties inside them! Plus, halls shape their built environment: an environment that is often, in the case of orchestras, in densely populated downtown locations. It’s like a miniature stadium. Those are attractive benefits to people who wield political or financial power.

Needless to say, over the years, many orchestras have had labor disputes coinciding with big capital campaigns for hall renovations. It’s a trope at this point.

To the symphony’s credit, it has stated publicly that “our priority is to stabilize the organization financially and support our artistic output.” But they’re also simultaneously ramping up for a capital campaign, so I mean… It’s clearly on the horizon.

There are ways that an organization might attempt to mitigate the more damaging side effects of a community’s tendency toward edifice complexes, and guide folks to supporting day-to-day operations. One might be hiring a beloved music director who is famous for innovative thinking and engaging, cutting-edge programs that are exciting to sponsor. Well, whoops.

By the way, the San Francisco Classical Voice article I mentioned earlier included an ominous detail…

Questions remain, especially about where the orchestra would perform during the construction — estimated at three years by the architect and two years by the SF Symphony administration. Davies would mostly be unavailable for rehearsals and performances, and the orchestra’s old home, the War Memorial Opera House, is fully booked by San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and others…

Unlike the New York Philharmonic’s three-year-long $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall, during which the orchestra played in Carnegie Hall and elsewhere, the SF Symphony would have no such options locally.

In 2012, the Minnesota Orchestra left Orchestra Hall during a renovation. It was supposed to play concerts at the Minneapolis Convention Center auditorium a few blocks away. As it turned out, the Orchestra Hall renovations ended up being finished before the sixteen-month-long musician lockout was. Now, I’m not saying that history will repeat itself in the future. But I’m also not saying that it won’t.

Is the departure of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen final?

Despite a petition from the Symphony musicians asking the board to find a way to keep Salonen, yes.

But Spivey said that while Salonen’s role as music director is ending, his relationship with the Symphony will continue. 

“He will most certainly be a regular guest that comes back and works with the orchestra,” confirmed Spivey.

Is Salonen in the room with us right now? I know the phrase “is the [X] in the room with us right now?” is a meme, but I’m literally asking you, is he in the room with you right now? If not, why not? Where is he? Why are you talking about his future when he’s not there? He is alive. Esa-Pekka Salonen is alive!

Has the search for the next music director begun?

No, but the search will commence soon. 

Folks, the classical music world plans its calendar out years in advance. The search should have started the day Salonen announced his departure. Heck, renowned orchestra CEO Deborah Borda has been quoted as saying that searches for future music directors are perpetually ongoing. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be mad if they lied about this one while awaiting the formation of an official search committee, just so it seems like they care. I genuinely can’t tell if they want a music director right now — I’m guessing they don’t until they finish their negotiations with the musicians — but at least pretend for the press, you know? If they’re bargaining in good faith, there’s no time to waste here. Why are they pretending there is?

“We will want to ensure that the person that we find not only is passionate about what they do on the stage, but they’re passionate about building this organization,” said Spivey, noting that the new music director will also need to be “a rallying force for continuing to build our audiences and that philanthropic support.”

Geeslin emphasized the collaborative arts environment in San Francisco, noting that the new director will join a vibrant leadership community.

Great. Conductors love…joining vibrant leadership communities and building philanthropic support. It’s the reason the best of them get into music. They love hobnobbing at gala balls with fellow leaders. Especially in tents.

Seriously, what are you doing to attract this hypothetical new director? Do you think this interview is helping? Who is this interview even for?

How does the Symphony plan to restore public trust?

Yes! Yes! This is a great question! Yes!

Spivey is optimistic. “There are a lot of positive drivers that will enable us to not only overcome those financial challenges but actually land in a very successful place down the road,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to build a philanthropic pipeline in the long term and ultimately, the opportunity to connect deeply to become a really vital part of the arts and culture scene and what makes San Francisco special.”

My follow-up: can you be more generic?

*

The interview ends there.

So. Hey. San Francisco Chronicle.

Look. I don’t blame you. Your dearly beloved arts critic just retired. You had to bring in people who don’t know the field, who are experts in other things, who probably have ten thousand other plates spinning and are existentially nervous about keeping their jobs, because everyone who writes for a living nowadays is existentially nervous about keeping their jobs, and trust me, I feel you. I am counting down the days until Chat GPT starts spitting out mean long-winded gif-encrusted labor dispute essays. But how were they supposed to know what to ask? Without training or experience, how were they supposed to parse the 990s? Or the financial statements of an organization that is spending, raising, and investing hundreds of millions of dollars a year? Again, there are literally hundreds of pages of numbers to go through, and they’re dense. I don’t blame them for not having the bandwidth to dig in here.

No, right now I feel like the bigger problem is how weird the orchestra leadership is acting.

Don’t get me wrong. Running an orchestra is hard. Running an orchestra well is incredibly difficult. It gets especially impossible when there are money troubles.

But the thing that grinds my gears here is, the stuff I’m talking about isn’t about money. This is about governance. This is about communication. This is about respect for a great artist. Respect for a great artist is free. Good optics are free. Answering questions intelligently, with empathy? Free.

I’m going to make a prediction. In the eyes of the public, this leadership team’s original sin won’t have anything to do with the First Problem. It won’t have anything to do with money. Instead, it’s all going to trace back to the decision to push Salonen overboard without a lifejacket and then act like it was no big deal, like they wanted to ghost him all along. So before they can solve whatever financial issues are or aren’t lurking in their 990s, the San Francisco Symphony has to address their Second Problem first. And they have to do it once and for all.

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June 11, 2013 · 7:03 pm

Summary of Recent Negotiations at American Orchestras

In light of the great news coming out of Pittsburgh (their orchestra settled their contract A YEAR EARLY!, AND they aren’t facing 30-50% cuts in compensation! yay, Pittsburgh!), I decided a summary of recent contract negotiations at major American orchestras was in order.

The orchestras are listed in order of endowment size (and you’ll definitely notice that toward the bottom of the list, as endowments get smaller, there is more friction and instability at the negotiating table). I focus largely on base salary here, but keep in mind there are many other moving parts to a contract, including working conditions and pensions and all that other fun stuff; however, those are more difficult for an outsider to properly compare and analyze, and I’m not going to write much about them, so go do some homework yourself if you want to learn more about those things.

I also rate each orchestra with my personal opinion as to whether said orchestra recently went through a “market reset” (the Minnesota Orchestral Association’s Orwellian phrase for “foisting massive cuts in compensation onto musicians”).

Endowment figures come from the Minnesota musicians’ website, and are probably a year or two old. If anyone steps forward with comprehensive updated endowment information, I’ll update the list.

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